Purdue University Engineers Set World Record In National Rube Goldberg Contest

The Rube Goldberg Contest is inspired from the American cartoonist Rube Goldberg who was also an innovator and an engineer. We know him for his popular series of cartoons that depicted use of complex gadgets to perform simple tasks in indirect & confusing ways.
#-Link-Snipped-#In this contest, college students compete to design a machine that uses the most complex process to complete a simple task. For e.g: Put a stamp on an envelope, screw in a light bulb, make a cup of coffee - in 20 or more steps. The competition is sponsored by the Purdue University campus chapter of Theta Tau, a professional engineering fraternity.

The final round of the national level Rube Goldberg Contest 2011 was held on Mar. 26 at the Purdue University. Stout won the 24th annual Rube Goldberg Machine Contest defending champion University of Wisconsin.

After this contest, a machine built by the Purdue's Society of Professional Engineers team completed a flawless run of 244 steps setting a world record. It is now featured online by the World Records Academy.

See their video here:

<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="640" height="510" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0TW6beIYKT4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

The 2012 National Rube Goldberg Contest is about inflating a balloon and popping it. Let's see what happens next year.

Source: <a href="https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/rubegoldberg/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Rube Goldberg Contest - Rube Goldberg Machine - Purdue University</a>